Alice Walker was born February 9, 1944, to sharecroppers Willie Lee and Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker in Eatonton, Georgia. Throughout her writings, Walker remains rooted in her Southern childhood as she addresses social, cultural, and political issues. At times critiqued for her realistic portrayals of poor black life in the south and her negative depictions of African American men, Walker has emerged as a prominent, prolific writer as her poetry, prose, and fiction explore patriarchal and socioeconomic oppression, feminism, and civil rights. Walker has received the Pulitzer Prize for her groundbreaking novel The Color Purple, as well as a Guggenheim fellowship and an award for fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other accolades.

Walker's novels include Meridian; The Third Life of ...